Council reassurance on domestic abuse services

The Highland Council has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting and strengthening support services for all survivors of domestic abuse across the Highlands.

Refuge accommodation for women and domestic abuse outreach services for all are vital emergency lifelines, and the Council is committed to continue supporting them moving forward.

The contracts are being reviewed to make improvements and ensure services reflect current need. This means there may be changes in the way these services are delivered but the Council is committed that they will continue to be available.

Importantly, there is no change before April 2026, at which point the new Highland-wide Domestic Outreach service will commence, and contracts for refuge services are in place until September 2026.

All council contracts are issued using a standard model contract, ensuring consistency and compliance across services.

What’s happening?

Domestic outreach services

Domestic outreach services are currently run by four women’s aid organisations in Highland – Inverness, Ross-shire, Lochaber, Caithness and Sutherland. These contracts run until 31 March 2026.

A procurement exercise has taken place to find service providers to jointly deliver outreach services for survivors of domestic abuse in Highland, irrespective of sex or gender, under the umbrella of a Highland-wide Domestic Abuse Service, from 1 April 2026.  

Contracts for domestic outreach support for women have been successfully awarded for the North Highland, Mid Highland and West Highland areas from 1 April 2026. The contract for South Highland has yet to be awarded.  As a result, a further phase of procurement will now take place to find a service provider for this area.

A separate contract for domestic outreach support for men, trans men and women, and non-binary people has also been issued.

The values of these contracts are commercially confidential until this exercise concludes.

The Council has benchmarked how much it spends on domestic abuse outreach services against other local authorities, while considering the service needs across all of Highland and the unique challenges of delivering a service in rural communities.

Refuge accommodation

Refuge accommodation in Highland is currently provided by Ross-shire Women’s Aid and Inverness Women’s Aid. The existing contracts run until 31 March 2026. To ensure continuity, the Council has confirmed funding to these providers for an additional six months, up to 30 September 2026, while a review of refuge services is carried out. This review is focussed on improving services. The Council is fully committed to providing refuge accommodation for women in Highland and has no intention of removing this essential support. The outcome of this review and recommendations will be presented at a future meeting of the Council’s Health and Social Work Committee.

Non-contracted discretionary funding

Discretionary funding for Women’s Aid organisations to access Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) services is currently under review. The Council remains firmly committed to multi-agency risk assessment and safeguarding and is working in partnership with the Violence Against Women Partnership to carry out this review.